


Quills

by squireofgeekdom



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: AU, AU - Daemons, Angst, Background First Aid & Ambulon, Canonical major character death, Gen, Look it’s a Luna 1 fic, Reader Beware, References to Past One-Sided Pharma/Ratchet, References to Past Ratchet & Pharma, Survivor’s Guilt, Torture, Victim Blaming, allusions to Ratchet’s passive suicidal ideation, but a somewhat hopeful ending, implied autistic!Ratchet, implied internalized aphobia, no one’s coping well and there’s a whole host of shit that goes along with that, references to alcohol-I-mean-engex use in a not-family-friendly way, references to aro!Ratchet, specifically Ratchet blaming himself, this fic is a whole mindfield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23839111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squireofgeekdom/pseuds/squireofgeekdom
Summary: When the wounds suffered can’t be hidden behind plating, they become harder to ignore.Daemon AU. First Aid, Ratchet, Luna 1 and the aftermath.
Relationships: First Aid & Ratchet (Transformers)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	1. First Aid

**Author's Note:**

> I’m borrowing the concept of this daemon AU from notwhelmedyet (see here: https://squireofgeekdom.tumblr.com/post/187480471404/notwhelmedyet-notwhelmedyet-notwhelmedyet) with her permission. (note: HDM book spoilers in the post, for anyone following the bbc show only)  
> Thanks to Kamemor for listening to me talk about this fic and mllemusketeer for being my first reader and reassuring me that there was at least one person in the audience for this fic.  
> All dialogue you recognize - most of the flashback dialogue - is borrowed from MTMTE vol 5.  
> This fic was difficult to write. Read and mind the tags, including the general ‘Reader Beware’.

_ Now _

Until he gets the call, he doesn’t realize Ratchet is hiding. 

“First Aid? It’s Rodimus. We have a problem in the medibay.”

“Call Ratchet.”

“We did. He’s not answering.” Rodimus says, “Can you come help us?”

Ambulon is dead; fuck off. “Yeah. Sure.”

After he’s dealt with the influx of patients the medibot couldn’t handle, he starts back to his quarters. 

Juvare bumps against his side. He looks down at the metallic otter-form of his daemon. 

“We should find them.”

First Aid looks back up and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to find them, he wants to go back to his quarters and close the door. 

He keeps walking; Juvare nips at his ankle. “ _ I’m  _ going to find  _ Torque. _ ”

First Aid stops, looks down at Juvare. Juvare glares up at him. 

He doesn’t want to think about what happened to Torque. Especially not while looking at his own daemon. 

Juvare flattens his ears, pressed up against First Aid’s leg. 

First Aid reaches down, picks him up. “Sorry, ‘Vare,” he says, holding his daemon to his chest while he presses his paws into First Aid’s shoulders, holding on too. First Aid keeps his arms wrapped around Juvare, as though he can protect him from anything terrible that could be done to him. 

As he thinks about it, he realizes that he’d hardly seen Ratchet, even as they were working on the casualties after Luna 1. He’d stayed working on the beds closest to his office, and -

He hadn’t seen Torque at all. They must have been hiding in the office, close enough for the strain not to be too distracting, or staying close and hidden under the medibay beds. And now - 

“We can look.”  _ But I don’t think the two of them want to be found,  _ he thinks, but doesn’t need to say - his daemon knows that as well as he does. 

\---

_ Then _

He wakes up in a cell to the sound of screaming.

First Aid doesn’t recognize the sound; he has no idea who could be making the terrible, high, keening that pierced his audials. 

Ambulon is already awake. First Aid stares at him. Ambulon shakes his head, just a little. He doesn’t recognize it either.   
  
Juvare shudders, pressing himself against First Aid’s side. Some terrible fear he doesn’t understand is shaking them both at the sound of that scream. He picks up his daemon and holds him tight. 

With his arms wrapped around his daemon, First Aid looks around, trying to determine where the hell they are. The last thing he remembers is being on the Lost Light and being attacked by gold robots, but he has no idea where they’ve brought them.

Is someone being tortured, to make them scream like that?

(Is he next?)

Even as he thinks it, he hears the screams begin to fade. Juvare shudders in his arms as the room goes quiet. 

The silence chills him to the core.

He looks across the room and sees the same horror reflected back in Ambulon’s optics.

At least he and Ambulon are together.

He thinks the same thing when the gold robots come to take them both from the cell.

\----

_ Now _

Ratchet is in his own office. 

First Aid knows this only because he hears the clatter of metal tools when he bangs on the door.

“Ratchet! Ratchet, I know you’re in there!”

There’s a long silence. First Aid almost goes to try the medical override on the door, and then - “I’m  _ working.” _

“ _ I  _ was working - there was a medibay emergency, didn’t you  _ hear  _ it?”

“I’m  _ busy.” _

“Ratchet, let me in.” Silence. “I’ll use the medical override. If I don’t know you’re -”

The door opens.

Ratchet  _ is  _ working; tools pulled out of his wrists to shape a small, fine metal rod that he’s bent over with intense focus.

No, not a rod, a  _ quill - _

\- a replacement for one of Torque’s quills. 

“You’re not using sentio metallico.” First Aid would recognize the shaping of sentio metallico. While a mech could be repaired with any metal that could bear the load, a daemon was meant to be formed entirely of their own sentio metallico. Any doctor learned to use a patient’s sentio metallico - kept in reserve from a forged mech’s harvesting, subspaced - to patch an injured daemon, with precise instruments, careful not to touch the daemon - 

\- at least, until the war. Forged Autobots on the frontlines quickly ran through sentio metallico reserves, and needed patches to daemons would be done with whatever could best make do. Ratchet had seen plenty of action, that much First Aid knows - maybe he had no other choice than to use whatever other metal he’s working with. 

But, “this is stronger,” is all Ratchet says. First Aid catches a glimpse of Torque’s eyes, from where they’re hidden behind Ratchet. 

\---

_ Then _

“First Aid? Ambulon?” 

The gold robot’s hands are still tight around First Aid’s arms, Juvare trailing behind, desperate to keep up - his short otter’s legs had struggled to keep up with the tall robots’ long strides, and First Aid had ached with the pain of it every time he fell behind.

Ambulon, held by the robot next to him, had an easier time of it, if you could call it that - being cold constructed meant he had no external daemon to be pulled from, his spark living safe inside his chest. 

In spite of that, First Aid almost wishes Ambulon did have an external daemon. He can feel Juvare, wishing he could nudge or press a paw to Ambulon’s daemon in comfort.

(The gold robots don’t have daemons either. They are  _ nothing  _ like Ambulon.)

“I had them delivered. Thought we’d make this a bit of a  _ reunion _ .”

He can feel Juvare’s hackles go up at the sound of Pharma’s voice, even if he can’t see him.

Ratchet is in the middle of the room, looking bewildered. Another golden robot hovers nearby, clearly ready to intervene if Ratchet tries anything. 

“What’s going on, Ratchet?” First Aid starts, “Pharma said this was  _ your _ idea.”

“Pharma,  _ no _ .” Ratchet sounds utterly horrified. “This isn’t what I had in mind.”

What the  _ hell  _ did you have in mind? First Aid almost snaps, but then Pharma speaks, ignoring him entirely. 

“No? How did you think this would work? You thought I’d grab some  _ worthless Decepticons _ and we’d go from there?” Pharma says. The golden panther isn’t beside him. She’s pacing, distant, behind him, her tail lashing back and forth. 

She doesn’t look good, First Aid notes, distantly. The two of them - her and Pharma - hadn’t talked that much on Delphi, and it had been mostly silent glares and gestures at the end. 

The two of them had  _ killed  _ patients.

Now - she looks worse than that. Feral. 

The two of them are the reason he and Ambulon and  _ fucking _ Ratchet are here now. 

So he couldn’t give a shit how she looked.

“I am  _ begging _ you -” and as Ratchet steps forward, utter desperation in his voice, First Aid sees where Torque was hiding behind him, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. 

They’ve been stripped of quills, only a handful remaining on their head and back. Worse, glowing blue Dust bleeds through from fine, fine cuts on their underside, like a claw had been traced along there, just enough to carve through the metal.

Or a knife.

And it must have been a knife, or a scalpel, First Aid realizes with growing horror, the cuts are too individual, too fine for Pharma’s daemon’s claws, the precise removal of Torque’s quills would take more dexterity -

\- would take  _ hands.  _

\---

_ Now _

“So what, now you just sit here and try and fix what -”

Ratchet mumbles something, too quiet for First Aid to hear.

“ - Pharma did?” First Aid finishes, “Let me help,” he can help, he  _ has to be able to help, _ “I can help make -”

_ “No.” _

It’s like a slap.  _ Ambulon is dead. _

No. He’d overstepped, now - repairing Torque’s quills isn’t his place. This isn’t - before. He isn’t there. 

“You need to be out there. I can’t just handle all the medibay emergencies myself, not when I -”  _ don’t have Ambulon.  _ “ - I’m  _ \-  _ on my own.”

Ratchet - stops. “It was my fault,” he says, louder, then “I’m sorry,” he adds more quietly, looking utterly defeated.

“It’s not - I -” First Aid stutters, Juvare pressed against his legs, “I know Torque needs -” 

__ “Not - not that. You’d still have -”

_ Ambulon. _

“Pharma did that. Pharma - ”

“I -” Ratchet starts, “if I hadn’t - if I hadn’t just  _ kept talking.”  _

Torque shudders.

And part of First Aid wants to agree, to ask what the hell Ratchet  _ was _ thinking, to rage against Ratchet’s pride and stubborness and his stupid  _ hands -  _

Juvare growls softly at him. First Aid looks at Torque.

\---

_ Then _

Juvare doesn’t make a sound, but First Aid can feel his horror, at even the possibility that Pharma would do  _ that,  _ wants to hope that Pharma had  _ just _ used an instrument, hadn’t laid hands on Torque - as though mutilating and hurting a daemon like that wasn’t horrific enough. He wants nothing more than to grab his daemon up into his arms and hold him far, far away from anyone who would  _ ever _ \- but the gold robot has him too securly for that.

He still shudders. Touching someone else’s daemon without consent is so taboo that even after four million years of war, Autobot circles only talked in hushed, horrified whispers about the few Decepticons known to have done  _ that  _ to an enemy, to  _ hurt  _ them: Overlord, the DJD - 

Pharma -  _ changes  _ one of his hands into a - chainsaw?  _ a chainsaw?! the fuck?! _ \- and swings it at Ratchet, who steps back to plant himself more firmly between Pharma and Torque. In his other hand Pharma is twirling -

\- twirling a quill between his fingers, and that’s - he can picture Pharma using that same hand to pull the quill from Torque and feels sick - and that’s before Pharma says “Relax! I’ll just slice them both  _ in half _ \- nothing fancy - and we’ll see who can stitch them back together the fastest.”

Being sliced in half for - for  _ sport -  _ is less sickening than the idea that Pharma had not only  _ laid hands  _ on someone else’s daemon, but  _ mutilated  _ them - even if he  _ had _ only used tools, not his bare hands, the idea of pulling apart someone’s daemon like that, of taking a knife to them to torture -

Oh, Primus. The screams he had heard.

He’d heard Torque screaming. Of course that had been a scream he’d never heard before, how could he have?

\---

_ Now _

Torque is still half-stripped of quills, and it’s hard to muster up any anger at Ratchet, knowing that, knowing what the two of them must have been through. 

Juvare leans against his side.

Then again, that doesn’t seem to stop Ratchet being angry at  _ himself _ . “I put the idea in his head, the  _ competition,  _ because I was too - I was too - I -”

“Oh for - you ever think for one second that  _ maybe _ the fact that  _ he  _ was  _ violating your daemon _ was  _ probably  _ more important than whatever you rambled  _ while being tortured?”  _ And he’s so  _ angry,  _ he  _ needs  _ to rage like this and Pharma deserves his rage, but he already - _ “ _ That maybe, just maybe, what he was  _ doing  _ was a better fucking measure of the situation than your shit? It wasn’t. about. you.”

“It wasn’t t-”

“Consider this: if he didn’t want to  _ murder Ambulon with a chainsaw,  _ he would have  _ not  _ murdered him with a chainsaw.” First Aid says, and if he spits the words in anger they don’t threaten to choke him.  _ Ambulon is dead, fuck you.  _ “Do you have  _ any  _ idea how  _ easy  _ it is  _ not  _ to murder someone with a chainsaw? I have managed to go my  _ entire  _ life without murdering  _ anyone  _ with a chainsaw, and it  _ was not hard _ . _ ”  _ He glares at Ratchet, and grumbles, “ _ Primus  _ knows you  _ and  _ Ambulon have tempted me to clong each of you upside the head with a wrench every once in a while, but fucking  _ chainsaws  _ did not come into it.”

“It was still my - idea. You -”

“Oh, so you just walked in there on your own two feet and said ‘hey, Pharma, why don’t you go murder Ambulon with those chainsaw hands of yours, I’m sure this will all work out perfectly -’”

“But I -”

“If he didn’t _want_ to kill him _he wouldn’t have!”_ First Aid shouts. “We were dragged out of _cells_ by those - those _machines!_ Did you think that after he was done _torturing your daemon_ he was what? Going to let the two of us out for a picnic? You think _you_ **made** him come up with the idea of hurting us? _We were on Delphi too!_ I was on Delphi _first -_ you wouldn’t even have _been_ there if it hadn’t been for _me_ figuring out he was _killing people!_ **I** _survived_ him on Delphi!”

“It wasn’t - he didn’t - _ it wasn’t torture _ .” Ratchet says, “He - I - I’ve been  _ tortured  _ before. That wasn’t -”

First Aid gapes at him. “What. The.  _ Hell.” _

“It wasn’t. It wasn’t  _ like that.”  _ Torque is pressed up against Ratchet’s side; First Aid can see them shaking. There are fresh weld marks where quills have been replaced along their back, and if he looks very carefully, he can see where welds on their underside have been so carefully sanded down so the scars can hardly be seen. 

Ratchet puts a quelling hand on Torque’s head. Juvare steps in front of First Aid, looking up at Ratchet and growling low in his throat. Ratchet looks down at Juvare, then at Torque, and lifts his hand as though it had been burned. 

“Yeah,” First Aid says, “you’re just locked in this office for repairs because they had a fucking  _ spa day.” _

“Ratchet -” Torque says, softly, “he -”

Ratchet lowers his hand back, more gently, and Torque leans their head into it. As smoothly as one being in motion, Ratchet picks Torque up and they scramble onto his shoulder, pressing their head up against his neck. 

\---

_ Then _

Distantly, he registers Ratchet desperately continuing, “Take your hands back! Please! You’re the better doctor - you deserve them!” 

Pharma was claiming this was about his  _ hands? _

_ His fucking  _ **_hands_ ** _? _

**_Seriously?_ **

“I’ll remove one and you can remove the other. What do you say? Are we good?” Ratchet continues, because of course Ratchet’s still trying to talk him down even with his daemon still bleeding, even after  _ torture. _

Pharma doesn’t even seem to be paying attention. “... You fix Ambulon, I’ll fix First Aid,” he says, staring at them - like they’re just a collection of parts. First Aid wants to spit in his face, but he’s not close enough.

“But -” Ratchet starts desperately.

“This is  _ happening _ Ratchet,” Pharma snaps. “Play along or I’ll get Tyrest to cut the  _ Lost Light _ in half, crew and all.”

Ratchet takes a step back, towards the gold robot behind him, and First Aid can see him and Torque making an uncomfortable shuffle as Ratchet tries to keep himself between Torque and both Pharma and the robot at the same time, leaving Torque huddling between his feet, blocked from view as best the two of them can. 

The golden robot looms over Ratchet, hands the size of his head  _ right there,  _ and First Aid can feel the strength in the grip of the hands on his arm. “Listen. Listen. Both of you,” Ratchet says to them, words tumbling out. “You’re just -- you’re just going to have to  _ roll with this _ , okay? I’m sorry.”

Because of course he’s sorry. A  _ murderer _ violates and tortures Ratchet’s fucking  _ daemon _ and threatens to chop both of them in two over some damn contest over his  _ hands -  _ his  _ hands?  _ That  _ had _ to be a fucking  _ joke _ \- and  _ Ratchet _ is the one apologizing. Fucking  _ Mortilus _ or some shit could crawl out of the floor and Ratchet would probably find a way to make it  _ his  _ problem.

Motherfucker.

“So  _ Doctor D.J.D.  _ is just gonna cut us in half?” First Aid snaps, with a glare at Pharma, who can’t even be bothered to look at him. The panther at his side swishes her tail back and forth. Juvare bristles.

“If you re-route your nerve circuits  _ away _ from your waist it’ll minimize the pain.” Ratchet says, like both of them haven’t realized that already. “I can do this, I can put you back together. It’s an easy fix. Don’t worry.” 

‘I can do this,’ Of course he fucking says that. He probably shouldn’t even be conscious right now.

“The waist?” Pharma says, with a kind of glee that turns First Aid’s internals. “Who said anything about the waist?”

“You said you were going to cut them in half.” Ratchet says, panic in his voice.

And First Aid doesn’t hear Pharma’s next words, because his chainsaw is ripping through Ambulon -  _ Ambulon - ! _

**_Ambulon!_ **

\---

_ Now _

“Delphi -” Ratchet starts, as though he’s only just now processed the second half of what First Aid had said, “if I hadn’t taken Pharma’s hands - he wouldn’t -” He’s got his right hand wrapped around his left wrist, rubbing at it frantically - Ratchet stims with his hands often, but this one’s something ugly, something he’d seen too much in the weeks after Delphi, like there’s a deep pain at the join he’s desperate to relieve, like some part of him wants to tear Pharma’s hands from his wrists. 

“Oh, for - you’re the only person on this boat so obsessed with your damn hands, you know that?” First Aid snaps. “Pharma went through the damn war, same as the rest of us, you think he didn’t understand the concept of reusing a _ part _ ? It was a goddamn legitimate salvage,” he continues. “Crazy idea, but if Pharma didn’t want his  _ hands  _ chopped off maybe he shouldn’t have tried to  _ kill us all. _ Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to  _ shoot  _ you,” he continues. “Whatever the hell else Drift did, the only thing he got wrong  _ there _ was that he didn’t go for the - go for the -”

Go for the head. 

He can feel the press of Juvare’s head against his hand, his daemon standing up to reach him. First Aid lifts him into his arms.

“I -”

“He  _ snapped,  _ Ratchet, he fucking  _ snapped  _ on Delphi,” First Aid says, letting the words pour out so as not to think about his own unfinished phrase, “and if you hadn’t taken his hands some other twisted  _ shit  _ would have pooled up in his processor and gotten spewed out  _ while. he. was.  _ **_torturing. you.”_ **

“It - he didn’t -”

_ “It was torture!”  _ First Aid shouts. 

_ “ _ We  _ saw  _ what he did to you.” Juvare says, to Torque. “We see it now.”

Ratchet turns, moving the shoulder Torque is on away from First Aid. Leaning back over his work bench, he shaves another piece off of a quill to carve it down to razor sharpness. Torque doesn’t say anything, only lets out a faint, wordless cry.

“I don’t  _ care _ what you say, I know what we saw, and it  _ was  _ torture,” First Aid snarls, “as sure as what he did to Ambulon was  _ murder!”  _ he shouts, “He tortured you, and he  _ killed  _ Ambulon, and it was  _ him,  _ **_he_ ** did that, not you or me or Ambulon,  _ him.” And so  _ I _ \-  _

“It’s  _ his _ fault Ambulon is dead.” Juvare snarls from First Aid’s arms. “ _ His  _ fault Torque is hurt. It is  _ not your fault.” _

“It’s not your fault.” First Aid repeats. “It’s not our fault, Ratchet. Yours or mine or Ambulon’s. It’s not our fault. It’s not your fault.” he says. “It’s not your fault.”

There’s a strange, choked hiccup from Ratchet. Torque leans close to his helm, whispering something in his audial. He runs a hand carefully down their back. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t protect you.” Ratchet says, finally, and First Aid doesn’t know if he means him or Ambulon or  _ Torque,  _ but - if he had to guess, he’d say he probably means all of them. 

\---

_ Then _

He doesn’t remember the robot letting him down. He doesn’t remember Pharma leaving.

He’s next to Ratchet, staring down at Ambulon’s dark optics, one each on the two halves of his body.

“Tell me you can save him. Ratchet?” he hears himself say. “You can  _ save him,  _ can’t you?”

“I don’t know, First Aid. I mean he’s -- look at him.  **_Look at him!”_ **

First Aid can’t look at anything else. 

_ “Pharma _ said that with the tools in this medibay he could fix  _ anyone _ \-- cure  _ anything _ . This is his way of proving he’s better than me.”

Ratchet’s hands keep moving while he babbles. First Aid wishes he’d shut up. ‘His way of’ - it was his way of - killing Ambulon. Trying to kill Ambulon. 

Juvare shakes by his side. 

“Cut Ambulon in half and  _ run off _ and leave me to - to - to  _ fail. _ ‘ _ I _ could save him.’ I can hear him saying it: ‘ _ I _ could save him, can’t  _ you _ ?’”

_ ‘can’t you?’  _

_ ‘can’t  _ **_you?’_ **

_ Ambulon’s dying here and it’s still about  _ you, he wants to snarl, but his vocalizer won’t work as he looks at the pool of energon bleeding off of - 

\- bleeding off of Ambulon, and - 

\---

_ Now _

“There was nothing you could do.” First Aid says, and his voice sounds hollow even to himself. “ _He_ **did** this to us, and there was nothing we could have done,” he realizes it as he says it, and he hates, hates the feeling of hollow helplessness it leaves in him, but Juvare nods in agreement before he presses his head against First Aid’s chest, and he holds him tighter.

“I could have done - I could have done  _ something _ . There was something I could have done  _ better _ ,” Ratchet says, “there  _ has  _ to have been,” he finishes.

He sounds as broken as First Aid has ever heard another mech sound, and it feels wrong from Ratchet, like seeing Torque wounded.

“No.” First Aid says, simply, and Torque butts their head hard against Ratchet’s helm. 

They stew in silence for moments that drag on, and First Aid lets Juvare down from his arms. 

Then Ratchet says, so, so quietly. “He wouldn’t be like this if I wasn’t -” he starts a vague, angry motion of his hand before grabbing it by the wrist and pulling it to himself, bracing his arms protectively across his chest, “- defective. If I could’ve just - given him what he  _ wanted _ , if  **I** was just  _ good enough -  _ he’d  _ never  _ have been on Delphi, and -”

“ _ No. _ ” First Aid  _ snarls.  _ “Don’t you  _ dare  _ say that about yourself. Don’t you dare call yourself -”

“Why  _ shouldn’t  _ I?” Ratchet snaps back. Torque hisses at Ratchet, and he ignores them. “Why shouldn’t -”

“You think you’re the only one? Are you really _that_ self centered?” First Aid asks incredulously, “You think you’re the only one who doesn’t want any of that? I know too many people - _care about_ too many people who are _just like you_ to - to just _stand here_ and listen to you call all of _them_ **defective**!”

Ratchet stares at him, doesn’t say anything. Torque chirps at Ratchet. Finally, he says. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, you  _ should  _ be.” First Aid snaps. “There’s nothing  _ wrong  _ with you.” He adds a little more quietly, and then amends, “well. Not  _ that,”  _ and Ratchet snorts with something resembling humor. “He -” First Aid starts, then stops, ‘ _ he made you feel like you weren’t good enough because you said no, made you feel defective, feel like a towering pile of useless garbage, just  _ shit,  _ saying yes wouldn’t have made it better, saying yes would have just shoved all that off to the next time you said  _ no,  _ believe me, I fucking know, it’s not about  _ you.’ all bubbling up in his vocalizer. 

“He hates it when anyone says no. Believe me, I’d know. Not like that,” he adds quickly, as the sudden murderous look on Ratchet’s face suggests he’s gotten completely the wrong idea and would like to rewind time a bit to shoot Pharma himself. “Just. In general, It's not about you.”  _ It’s not your fault.  _

There’s just the faintest jerk of the head from Ratchet.

Another silence. Then, “if I could -”

\---

_ Then _

“Let me help. I can help.”

“Is he still behind us?”

“Who? The robot with the -? Yeah, we’re still trapped.” 

If it weren’t for the guard, First Aid would have run already, after Pharma, dragged him back here by the  _ wings _ to make him fix Ambulon; as Ratchet keeps insisting he could. But he knows those gold hands; he can’t break that grip. 

The best he can do is stay and help. He has to help. If he helps they can fix Ambulon. They have to. “Let me  _ help _ …!” He repeats.

“You can’t.”

He can’t see Torque; they must be huddled up against Ratchet’s side, away from the remaining guard robot, away from First Aid, away from the door Pharma had left through. Ratchet putting himself between them and anyone who might see them,  _ touch  _ them.

The thought of it still makes First Aid want to purge. 

And that’s what forces him to bite back everything he might otherwise want to say, keep his words level. Well. Level-ish. “Dammit, Ratchet, you  _ know  _ I can help.” He has to help. He has to help. He has to save Ambulon. “You  _ need  _ help, after -” he jerks his head towards where Torque must be hiding.

“We’re not having this conversation now.”

“ _ Or ever, more like.”  _ First Aid mutters to himself. “Fine. Not having that conversation,” he says, “I’m just  _ saying _ I can help you fix Ambulon.”

“And I’m saying you can’t.” Ratchet says, his voice tight.

“ _ Why can’t I! _ ” First Aid finally snaps. 

“Because he died half an hour ago.” 

_ he died _

First Aid doesn’t register anything else but static.

\---

_ Now _

“Stop. Just - stop.” First Aid snaps. “Ambulon is  _ dead _ . He’s  _ dead -” _

_ your fault it wasn’t you instead why terrible you’re alive terrible you’re glad you’re alive do you think you were better than him you shouldn’t be alive  _ **_your fault_ **

Juvare presses against his leg.

“- and  _ Pharma  _ killed him, Pharma, not you or me -  _ it’s not our fault  _ because  _ he  _ killed Ambulon and so I - I -” 

Juvare lets out a small cry.

“I had the shot and I took it.” He says, like a line from a Wreckers report. “I had the shot and I took it. I had the shot and I - and I -”

He feels Juvare move from where he has leaned up against his legs, and looks down. Torque’s climbed down from Ratchet’s shoulder, down to the floor, where they’re leaning across, holding out one paw, and Juvare moves forward and First Aid can feel Torque’s paw on Juvare, the way they hold on, and he takes one step forward and Ratchet is there too, holding on.

“I took it. I killed him.”

He doesn’t want to be crying, because  _ Pharma deserved it,  _ because  _ it wasn’t his fault,  _ but somehow he is anyway, he doesn’t want to be crying on  _ Ratchet,  _ of all people, but somehow he is anyway, and Ratchet’s holding on and maybe crying too, and Torque holds on to Juvare, holds on even as stripped and scarred as they are. 

“I’m sorry,” Ratchet says, “I’m sorry. It should have been me. I should have - you shouldn’t have had to -”

_ It should have been me.  _ First Aid shakes his head against Ratchet’s chest. “I -”

“It’s not your fault.” Ratchet says, “It’s not your fault. It’s not our fault.”


	2. Ratchet

_ Then _

He regains consciousness to the sound of his own name. 

“ Ratchet…?  Raaaat-chet…?”

He knows that voice. Why does he know that voice?

“It’s me, Pharma.”

Oh.

Oh,  _ fuck _ .

“Come on -- I want to play a  _ guessing game. _ ”

“Your face, officially the  _ very last thing _ I want to wake up to.” Something is wrong. Something is wrong other than Pharma being here in front of him, far, far too close. It’s hard to avoid his eyes; he looks down.

Ratchet’s fists tighten, there are restraints on his wrists. He’s restrained at the ankles, at the neck, and something else is wrong - 

_ Where’s Torque? _

Keutikos is pacing behind Pharma and her golden eyes are staring at a box on the floor, and there’s ice in her gaze and ice piercing through him, cold, something’s been stripped away his plating’s gone his frame’s gone he’s - 

He’s all still here. His frame is still there, his connection with Torque is still there even if he can’t see them, can’t hear them, whatever else, they’re still there, the two of them are still  _ together _

_ Where’s Torque? _

“Ouch, tongue still sharper than a - quill.” There’s something in his hand  _ there’s something in his hand  _ he’s going to be sick something  _ has  _ been stripped away has been - 

\- there’s a hollow inside him and he could purge. 

“And to think -- we used to be  _ buddies _ ! The Deltaran medical facility, remember? We were _ inseparable! _ ” 

Yeah, ‘cause Ratchet was stupid enough to think - 

_ We couldn’t be good enough we just wanted to be good enough why -  _

“Yeah, you hear that?” he says, exhausted by the memory, “It’s the glorious sound of the  _ past tense _ .” Why did he  _ say that,  _ he can’t just - 

“It doesn’t matter, anyway: I’ve  _ outgrown _ you. I’ve got a  _ new _ best friend now.” Pharma turns his back on him. “He found me sleeping in the snow and showed me how to work  _ miracles! _ ”

The snow on Delphi -  _ Delphi - _ he shouldn’t have let him leave  _ he shouldn’t have let them leave  _ this was his fault - 

The buzzing isn’t just in his head, not just static. “Calm down, Pharma. You’re _ buzzing _ ,” he says, even though it makes no sense, his hands open and close but he can’t reach he can’t move he can’t think and the buzzing is so loud he can’t hear  _ Torque - _

“I am now.”

It takes him a moment to realize, to see as Pharma wanders away from him. “Your  _ hands _ …”

“What about my hands?” Pharma sounds almost sing-song with excitement.

They aren’t hands at all, they’re chainsaws - there had been a hand there, there  _ had _ been a hand holding a - but chainsaws can’t hold anything. “They’re stupid.” It takes him a second to realize he’d said it out loud  _ why did he say that. _

Pharma’s walking towards the box and he’s lost track of Keutikos she’s no longer behind the box and then he hears a _growl_ from behind him and he’s going to _die,_ Pharma changed his hands into _fucking chainsaws_ and he’s going to die _not here not for_ ** _nothing_** he should have died on Delphi he should have made sure Pharma was dead we should have _died_

_ Torque - _

“Actually,” Pharma says, “they’re very  _ clever _ . They can turn into anything.” And in an unsettling flurry of motion that isn’t  _ right -  _ the chainsaws change back into hands, and he stretches closer towards the box. “They were a  _ gift  _ from one genius to another. Speaking of gifts…” 

Pharma points at the box, as though Ratchet isn’t already staring at it with all his focus, as though he doesn’t already know what’s in it, as if he isn’t strapped here frozen with the image that Pharma is going to pick up the box and fly away until the two of them are  _ torn apart _ and he can’t they  _ can’t - _

_ “tah-dah _ ! Now, about that guessing game…”

Keutikos is not behind him, Keutikos is behind Pharma, far behind, her tail swishing back and forth, her golden eyes locked on the box again. It had never bothered him that Keutikos so totally outclassed Torque in size, because he’d thought she would never - they would never. Until Pharma had.

And then - Torque was a porcupine.

But Pharma had a quill in hand, and - 

_ stop stop stop  _ **_stop_ **

\- and Pharma reaches into the box and  _ pulls _ and something is  _ torn  _ out of Ratchet shuts off his vocalizer doesn’t scream - when his processor is working enough to pull together images there's shock there isn’t energon bleeding out of him onto the floor.

It’s not pain, it’s something worse - else, it’s - 

_ make it stop make it stop make it  _ **_stop_ ** __

Distantly, he realizes that Pharma is still saying something about his guessing game, still saying something about the box, like he doesn’t know  _ who  _ is in the box.

He reactivates his vocalizer. He just needs Pharma to  _ stop _ . He just - “I’m done with this, Pharma. I give up, okay.”

Pharma looks up, which means he isn’t touching Torque. “But you haven’t even had your first guess!”

“ _ I don’t care what’s in the box.”  _ Don’t touch Torque don’t touch Torque don’t take another quill  _ don’t touch Torque - _

_ stop stop stop  _ **_stop_ **

_ “Liar.”  _ Pharma’s on his feet, walking towards him, away from Torque, and Ratchet keeps himself from letting any expression of his utter relief show. “You care. All you  _ do _ is care. You care about everything and everyone. It’s one of your more admirable weaknesses.”

“Either show me or don’t.” He needs to see Torque - he’s terrified of seeing what’s been done to Torque - he has to keep talking - “I’m not playing.”  _ I need to see Torque. _

“Oh, alright. I’ll show you what’s in the box.” Panic and desperation surge through Ratchet’s lines as Pharma steps closer to the box, looking back at Ratchet over his shoulder. “Ready…?  _ Behold!”  _

_ Torque - ! _

They’re -

they’re - 

_ Their quills. _

He’s being stripped of himself; that’s what this is. 

“ _ Ratchet -”  _ Torque whispers, and it’s only then that Ratchet realizes they are strapped down just as he is, their tail too, so they couldn’t defend themself, couldn’t fight back while they were stripped of their last, desperate defenses. He strains against his restraints as Torque strains against theirs, he needs to get to them, the two of them need to be together, he needs to - to protect them -

“That’s right Ratchet -  _ you’re _ in the box!” Pharma exclaims, gleeful. “Isn’t he so much  _ nicer  _ this way?” he adds, looking down at Torque.   
they they they they  _ they _

Pharma looks directly at the expression on his face and  _ smiles. _

And pulls out a scalpel.

He needs to stop Pharma needs to say something to stop him he must know something to say to stop him he can’t freeze why why  _ why _

_ stop stop stop  _ **_stop_ **

No words come, nothing to stop Pharma, and he shuts down his vocalizer as Pharma reaches with the scalpel towards Torque, towards their vulnerable underside, and  _ - _

\- not in his frame helpless torn between frame and Torque him and them helpless and torn apart together nothing he can do because nothing is  _ him _ -

\- needs it back he needs plating quills needs to be safe to do something to be safe

_ make it stop make it stop make it stop make it  _ **_stop_ ** __

“ - feel that?” he finally catches Pharma saying, over the sound of Torque screaming that pierces to the core, over the temporary inability of his processor to register anything but pain and  _ wrong  _ he  _ hates _ it hates not being able to  _ think _ he can’t - 

_ make it  _ **_stop_ ** _! _

“Can you feel the -- shhhh --” he hushes Torque’s screams as he slices another cut into them, “can you feel the blade against your daemon?” he asks, as though the cuts on Torque’s side aren’t the only thing Ratchet  _ can _ , as though he hasn’t been ripped through so they were pouring out on the floor - 

_ make it stop make it stop make it  _ **_stop_ ** __

“Only --  **you** haven’t  _ screamed _ yet,” Pharma continues, and Ratchet is grateful that the forced shutdown of his own vocalizer has held, but it can’t stop the way his whole body is gripped with pain, it must show and he hates it. “which makes me wonder how  _ accurately _ your nervecircuits are reporting the sensation.” There’s a chilling, hungry look on Pharma’s face, poised for Ratchet to break, hungry for his screams, more of his  _ pain. _ “You’re not  _ severed,  _ are you? No, you wouldn’t do that to yourself, not if you thought it’d interfere with your  _ work.  _ Even if it would get rid of the  _ wanting  _ you hate so much.”

Ratchet  _ doesn’t _ want; not in the way Pharma means. That was the problem.

Not that he had known that, not until it was too late.

“But you always were cold.” Pharma adds. “I wonder how much of a bond there would be to sever. I’d hate for your brain to be  _ misinformed _ .” He says, and he’s watching Ratchet for pain, watching the grimace on his face and the way his arms and hands shake, watching so intently - 

\- so intently that he’s stopped pressing new cuts into Torque. 

_ make it stop make it stop  _ **_make it stop_ **

He wants something. Pharma always wants something from him. Maybe this time it’ll be something Ratchet has to give. 

Maybe there’s a lie he can tell that will make Pharma stop. 

_ Anything  _ to make Pharma stop. 

(Thank fuck no Decepticon had ever tried this instead of torture; he’s say anything right now to keep the scalpel away from Torque for just another  _ moment.) _

_ make it stop make it stop make it stop _

Pharma looks back at Torque as their scream fades to a whimper. Ratchet turns his vocalizer back on and forces himself not to scream; forces himself to speak words, any words. “Can we talk?” he starts, and Pharma looks back up at him with that same unhinged hunger. “Pharma, can we talk?” he says, and catches the sharp glint in Pharma’s eyes at the sound of his own name. “I’d like that. You and me, eh?” he tries to sound like he half believes it, like his voice isn’t shaking, tries to look Pharma in the eyes like Pharma always wants, or at least as close as he can bring himself to bear, anything to keep Pharma’s focus on him and not Torque. “You and me, talking into the night, just like the old days.”  _ Please stop please stop please stop _

“Happy to talk,” Pharma says, every predatory panther’s instinct evident in his grin: he’s tasted blood. “happy to listen to the panic in your voice.”

He is, he’s  _ enjoying _ watching Ratchet; as long as he’s enjoying it more than slicing into Torque -

_ make it stop make it stop make it stop _

He’s had to revise many of the things he’d thought he’d known about Pharma, but he still knows Pharma liked speeches, liked talking, liked talking about himself. Delphi showed that had only become  _ more _ true. He’s sure to be just as maniacally eager to give his grand speech about the how and the why of his plans here as he was on Delphi, enough to focus on talking and not the scalpel in his hand. “What’s this about? Revenge?”

Fuck, nothing in his processor makes sense anymore.

He has Pharma’s attention, he stands up, away from Torque, and Ratchet’s hands relax just a fraction. “At first, I wanted to hurt you for ruining things at Delphi.” Pharma walks closer to Ratchet, further from Torque, waving his hands in a grandiose gesture. “But when you crashed I saw that you had stolen my hands. That took things to a whole new level. You declared war on my body, Ratchet. I’m  _ retaliating _ .”

Is it just the pain, or does that make no sense? He can’t tell.

_ make it stop make it stop make it stop _

But it’s his fault. It’s always his fault.

At least it’s not about him not being good enough. 

“I was going to take my hands back while you were unconscious.” Pharma’s still talking. “I expect they’ll be deep-wired and socket locked, but that’s fine,” he’s turning away, looking away from Ratchet, closer to where Torque is still strapped down, still vulnerable, and Ratchet’s engine drops. “That’s easy to work around -- especially here.”

Ratchet grabs onto that with both hands, desperate to keep Pharma’s attention off Torque, hoping that Pharma will be eager to brag about whatever he’s found on Luna 1. “Oh yeah, because Luna 1 is made of magic, isn’t it? If you cross your wires and wish hard enough, Primus will make all your dreams come true…” 

He watches Pharma carefully, frozen - has he gone too far? “Trust me, the only difference between Luna 1 and Luna 2 is the number.” He tries to keep the relief off of his face when Pharma turns back to him and starts to speak again, relief even though Pharma’s face is a picture of madness. He just needs to keep Pharma talking. He can’t let him touch Torque again.

_ make it stop make it stop make it stop _

“No, what makes this place special is the stuff Tyrest brought with him when he arrived. The medibay, Ratchet -- it’s an  _ embarrassment of riches _ . Every piece of avant-garde Cybertronian technology that Magnus has ever repossessed…it’s all here. Stuff I’ve never even  _ seen  _ before.”

He can’t help a surge of hope,  _ can it fix Torque’s quills?  _

He squashes it quickly. He can’t think about that right now; not when Pharma could do something worse any second. He’s walking around the room, circling where Torque is strapped down, even as Keutikos slowly circles the room, distant. “You always did like your instruments.”  _ Why did he say that.  _ He has to keep talking, even if he can barely register the words, because Pharma’s twirling his scalpel and he’s too close to Torque - 

Pharma seizes onto the topic with gusto, and he relaxes his hands a fraction. “Ah, but it’s not just the instruments -- it’s the way they’re  _ played _ . A skilled musician -” he’s clearly talking about himself, even as he gestures with a scalpel  _ too close to Torque _ , and - 

He presses his hand against Torque’s back -

_ nonono _

\- just to show he can, Torque can’t stop him,  _ Ratchet can’t stop him, _ and Ratchet - 

_ make it stop make it stop make it stop _

\- can’t process the rest of what he’s saying. “Meaning?” He forces himself to ask; he just needs to keep Pharma talking, even if the words fight him  _ he needs Torque back _

“Meaning that in here, in this medibay, I can cure  _ anything _ . I can do  _ anything _ .” 

Anything, and he’s chosen to take his hands, hands and a simple scalpel to Torque, Torque, and Ratchet is going to be sick, he’s - he has to keep Pharma talking, he has to protect Torque - protect them from anything worse - 

“Anything except remove a pair of hands.” Ratchet twitches his fingers, moving his hands as much as he can with the cuffs - he can’t move them the way he’d like to, not in any way that will help him  _ think.  _

He just needs to keep Pharma talking; there has to be more to his grand plan that he can pontificate about, he still has Pharma’s attention “C’mon Pharma -- the truth. Deep-wired, socket-locked, and still on my wrists. Why?”

his hands not his hands he’s not good enough he keeps failing he can’t protect them he has to keep  _ talking - _

“Because I’m a  _ doctor _ not a  _ bomb disposal expert _ .” Pharma says, stepping closer to him.

He’s not hearing right, that has to be it. He’s in a bad - 

_ make it stop make it stop make it stop  _

\- processor feedback loop. “You think -- wait. You think I wired  _ your  _ hands -- the ones I attached to  _ my _ body --” he adds, rotating them around again, “you think I  _ wired them to explode _ ?” 

“I…” Pharma falters, turning slightly and crossing his arms, and no, no no why did he say that why can’t he make the words work he’s going to hurt Torque again, “... think it’s a possibility, yes.”

“Or maybe … maybe you’re scared of  _ failure _ .”  _ Why did he say that  _ but it keeps Pharma’s attention on him; the challenge has Pharma locked on him in a way that would be chilling if it weren’t the only thing keeping his attention off of Torque. He manages an expression on his face that probably isn’t a grimace. “Maybe you’re afraid you won’t be able to pick the lock or loosen the wiring, so you want  _ help _ . I get it Pharma,” he adds, stringing together whatever words seem likely to keep Pharma’s attention now, to - 

_ make it stop make it stop make it stop  _

\- keep talking just make the words - “It took me a while but -- it makes sense now.  _ I’m better than you _ .” why why  _ why did he say that _

“A better doctor? Please. I overtook you years ago.” Pharma is - 

_ stop stop stop stop _

\- too close  _ too close -  _ he can’t get away, the scalpel that cut Torque against his face he’s going to be sick Pharma is still talking “... to slap you down.” Ratchet catches at the end. 

“Prove it,” he doesn’t even register the words in his processor before he hears them coming out of his mouth, he just has to keep  _ talking - but -  _ “Let us out of these -” he pulls his hands against the restraints, “and prove it.”  _ give me Torque back let me hold them I can  _ protect  _ them -  _ “A race to fix the same injury -” he says, nothing but desperate to have his  _ daemon _ back in his arms,  _ safe _ \- 

_ make it stop make it stop make it stop  _

“ - the better surgeon wins the hands.”

Pharma looks at him, and he has his attention now, even though he hardly knows what he just said. Pharma steps so so close -

_ stop stop stop stop _

\- and he tries but  _ can’t _ he flinches back and shutters his optics - 

\- Ratchet wakes up.    
  
Torque rushes to him, and the sight of them stripped of quills is like dragging Ratchet’s engine and every inch of cabling out of him, but even that can’t smother the relief as he picks up his daemon, holds them in his arms, “you’re safe you’re safe I won’t let him touch you it’s okay it’s okay I’m so sorry I’m so -”

Torque doesn’t speak, just out lets one choked cry and Ratchet will never, never be able to make up for how he’s failed, for that cry, for the absent quills, the way he can almost feel the Dust bleeding out from Torque in his hands, he’ll never - 

\- he has to keep them safe now.   
  
He clutches them tight, grateful now that they settled small enough for him to protect them behind his arms, and the two of them hold on. 

\---

_ Now _

Ratchet holds on to First Aid, feeling every joint in his hands ache, like somehow he can make up for not protecting him if he holds on to him tight enough. He knows Torque is doing the same for Juvare, even as part of both of them shakes in terror at Torque being touched even by another daemon, at Torque still being without most of their quills, unprotected.

Well, some hysterical part of Ratchet's processor thinks, as he feels Torque's horror mingled with his own, Pharma found a way to make  _ absolutely sure _ you’d never be stupid enough to ask anyone to be your amica ever again, as if he hadn’t already. 

Just the thought of someone else touching Torque, even for that ceremony, that they - just the thought sent a fresh jolt of terror through them both.

There are tears against Ratchet’s chest, and First Aid shudders all over before letting go, stepping back. 

There’s a sudden surge of - worry? on First Aid’s face. Ratchet realizes with a start that his own face is wet, and wipes it away hurriedly. Torque lets go of Juvare, and Ratchet sits back down, letting Torque climb back up to his shoulder. 

“So what now?” First Aid asks, one hand on Juvare’s head, “you keep -” he waves a hand at the workbench, where Ratchet is making Torque’s new quills, “and I - handle the medibay, until -”

_ You’re not doing your job, so what good are you?  _ Ratchet hears, and his hands shake. “I - I have to -” he stutters, reaching up to place his hands on Torque to steady himself, running his hands down the quills laid flat along their back.

“I know.” First Aid says.

“Suppose you should get the practice, managing your own medbay,” he makes himself say, finally, “you are the next CMO. Could do the handover, just -” and there’s something like relief in that thought.

First Aid shakes his head. “I don’t think I can be CMO,” he admits. “Not like this. Not like …”

There’s a part of his processor that’s been screaming at him that he should have died instead of Ambulon, and a larger part that can’t find a reason that would be so bad. 

He doesn’t belong in this world anymore; and he hasn’t had much attachment to being in it for a while.

But if he’s needed as CMO? That was a reason to try to stay attached to being alive.

Until the kid’s ready. He knows First Aid is his successor; making sure he’s ready is the completion of his work. 

“Yeah, you can,” Ratchet says. “You’re a tough kid. You’re both tough,” he adds, looking at Juvare. “Wouldn’t have picked you if you weren’t. You’ll come through this.”

Will  _ you? _

Now he has to. Until First Aid’s ready. “But,” Ratchet allows, “maybe not - right now,” and First Aid sighs with relief. “I’ve hung on this long. I can hang on a little bit longer. Whatever time you need.”

“In perpetuity,” First Aid mutters to himself, then shakes his head. “Thanks.”

“You  _ are  _ going to get through this,” Ratchet says. “Okay? We’ll - we’ll have a ceremony. Or something. When -” 

He doesn’t realize he’s trailed off until First Aid laughs, suddenly. “I don’t know if either of us should be CMO right now.”

Ratchet bites back an ‘I’m fine,’ First Aid wouldn’t listen to that, even though he’s fine  _ enough _ . “Yeah, well,” Ratchet says instead. “I’ll manage.”

“How?” First Aid says, with a half laugh, half hiccup.

_ Working until I’m tired enough to not dream, and drinking when that doesn’t work. The usual remedy.  _

“You should probably talk to Rung,” he says.

“You first.” First Aid snorts. 

Ratchet physically balks at the suggestion, crossing his arms protectively over his chest to steady himself. It’s not like it was that  _ bad _ \- he’s not  _ Fortress Maximus,  _ or something, and  _ he’s  _ not -

Torque presses themself hard up against his chin. He tightens his grip around himself, resisting the urge to rub at his neck. 

He finally reaches a hand up to gently press against Torque’s head, curling his fingers around their ear. “You should think about the kid,” they say quietly, into his audial.

Yeah. The kids who survived the war deserved better than the bad engex and sleepless nights the broken down old jalopies like him, who’d already lost most of their years to it, were used to. If that meant putting up with Rung trying to talk at him about ‘trauma’ for an hour, well, fair enough. Hopefully he’d at least be useful to Aid.

If not, at least Ratchet knew where Swerve kept the good stuff. The kid deserved that, at least. 

“Okay,” he says, and First Aid looks up, surprised. 

“Wait, fuck,” First Aid says, “Really?”

Ratchet almost wants to back out, but Torque presses against his helm, and he says, “Yeah. If that’s what it takes.”

“Oh.” First Aid says, after a moment. “Okay then,” he rubs at his visor with the heel of his palm. “I’m going to go - finish cleaning up. You’re going to -?” he waves at the workbench.

“Should just be one more night.”

“One more - fuck, Ratchet, have you even slept?” 

“I -” he hadn’t thought anything of it, but First Aid looks - despairing. “No.” How could he possibly sleep with Torque - with Torque  _ not safe _ ? He  _ has  _ to stay awake, he has to protect them. 

“You’d take my circuit boards to the cleaners if I tried to do work that fine on no sleep.” 

A sharp knock on the side of Ratchet’s helm forces him to look at Torque, who nods. “He’s right.”

First Aid crosses his arms and stares at Ratchet, joined by Juvare.

“I suppose I could lie down while you clean up around the medibay.” Ratchet says, “just wake me before you go, I’ll keep an eye on things after.”

“Sure.” First Aid says without any surety. He turns to leave, and then stops. “Ratchet…?”

“Yeah?”   
“We’re -” Aid shakes his head, cuts off whatever the original question was going to be. “You - you can fix Torque?”

Not like new, but the two of them had given up on that a long time ago. “Of course.”

First Aid nods. “Get some rest,” he says, before closing the door behind him. 

When the door closes, Ratchet stays upright for only a moment before collapsing back into his chair. He holds tightly to Torque and presses his face to their side. 

“Sorry,” he starts, thinking to apologize for letting First Aid in, before he had finished Torque’s quills, to apologize for not listening, for the lack of sleep, but he can’t get those words out, and once he starts he can’t stop, “sorry, sorry sorry sorry -”

Torque presses themself more tightly against Ratchet’s neck and helm. “It’s okay.”

Ratchet shakes his head.

“It’s - better, that we talked to them.” Torque says, “We couldn’t hide from First Aid and Juvare forever. And -” Torque trails off, letting out a slight whimper and settling their head against Ratchet’s. 

“Yeah.”

“We’ll talk to Rung.” Torque says. “For the kid’s sake.”

“Yeah.” Ratchet says, then, after a few moments. “Torque?” 

“Yeah?”

“We -” he starts, and hates the way his voice cracks like a sparkling. “We’re going to be okay?”

Torque hesitates, then nods, “We’re going to be okay.” they say, nuzzling closer under his helm. “Now get some rest, you nearly fouled that last join and you know it.”

“Sorry.”

“ _ Sleep. _ ” 

Ratchet doesn’t want to, not until the work fixing Torque is done, not until they’re both safe. But he can’t afford to hurt Torque, or leave them unsafe with a badly done job.

He gets up, goes to sit on the cot he keeps in his office. First Aid’s just outside with Juvare. 

Maybe it’s safe enough to rest a little.

Ratchet lays back, shutters his optics. Torque curls up in his arms, where Ratchet can hold them.

Ratchet sleeps.

END


End file.
